It is a great pleasure for me to invite you to Cologne, Germany from July 7 to 12, 2013 for the 19th IAA Humans in Space Symposium. The main theme of the symposium will be

"Challenges of Space Life Sciences for Future Exploration:

Prof. Dr. Rupert Gerzer, Director of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine of the DLR

Focusing on Hypothesis-Based Research using Space and Terrestrial Analogs."

In recent decades, space life sciences research has resulted in many advances in our knowledge of how the human body and life itself works. This field has matured from approaches like phenomenology, spin off strategies or risk based approaches towards tackling hypothesis-based basic questions. It is now time to end the artificial separation between space and terrestrial life sciences and to focus on those questions of life sciences for which space experiments can give answers. Operational space medicine questions, for which we have only a weak understanding of the underlying basic physiology, will remain as major research questions in the future.

The German Aerospace Center DLR is currently constructing a major new research facility named :envihab that will be operational in early 2013. This facility will symbolize a new approach in space research: Look from problems or questions in space towards the underlying basic question first. Then design a hypothesis and an approach to answer the basic question and, later, how and where to apply the answers. If this is done, a separation between "space thinking" and "earth thinking," as is still common in space research, will suddenly be counterproductive and the question as to where solutions would be applied first (in space or on earth), will also be secondary. In other words, in the future, the main goal will be to make use of the high potential that space research may have for answering basic scientific questions.

As the International Space Station (ISS) will hopefully be available for research beyond 2020 and as it is not sure, at this time, which opportunities for space life sciences research will be available beyond 2020, we should now try to optimally use the ISS opportunity to focus on hypothesis-driven research.

Therefore, the organizers of the 19th IAA Humans in Space Conference will organize a program that focuses on basic major questions and challenges and will try to attract respective specialists, regardless of whether they are from the space research community or not. We hope for high attendance at the conference, stimulating interdisciplinary discussions on how to focus on major life sciences questions that can be answered with the help of space research. This will also involve the topic of future joint funding approaches.

We hope to meet many friends at the Symposium, make new friends and to strengthen the international community of pioneers, who use the environment of microgravity for the benefit of mankind as well as for helping to expand the action radius of the human race.